Imagination and living otherwise

I5

I think that the imagination is what animates really robust, resilient, dynamic social struggles. So in that way the radical imagination has to speak to how we [are] going to organize ourselves. How are we going to make sure, for instance, while we're busy imagining how our radical action is going to change the world that people with kids or with different abilities are going to be able to be a part of this? How are we going to meet the needs of people on the ground? How are we going to make sure that we have the resources to sustain people? How are we going to make sure that we protect each other from oppression whether internally or externally? And I think imagination has something to say to all those things and for me imagination is that. It's the social imagination of a people’s spirit to resist and live otherwise than they do right now.

Reaching people

I7

There's lots of people who, if you tap into their values in the right way, will be able to get onside with you in a way that at least will keep us going, that at least will keep us on a more positive track. I think it's just a matter of bringing out those values and framing them in such a way that they enable us to make more intelligent political decisions.

Accelerating the collapse

I2

I think that the whole concept of shit hitting the fan is a weird way to refer to a collapse that's already in progress and that's depressing. I feel like there's going to be an acceleration that could be really fast.

Reconsidering the end goals

I31

We need to change the end goal. Is the end goal about economic growth and increasing wealth or is the end goal...human well-being and quality of life? There is a really rich discourse around those things - gross national happiness and genuine progress indicators and those sorts of things. It's not enough just to do the academic research and come up with these ideas, there has to be direct correlations within the politics.

Radical dialogue

I14

For Marxism to work it has to be a discussion and if you look at the period where...the great Marxist revolutions happened, I mean the early 1900s, it was a discussion. Lenin and Trotsky would debate each other, Luxemburg would debate, other folks from Germany or from France would weigh in on those debates. It was a conversation about...what tactics the progressive movement should be using but also on the actual composition of what Marxist theory is and then with the establishment of the Soviet Union it became this very, very doctrinaire approach to Marxism which is an absolute failure and has led us to the point where I think the left is the weakest it's ever been since the rise of capitalism in a lot of ways.

Other ways of knowing and doing

I30

We [First Nations communities] were the original communists without the authoritarianism, really, truly. There's ways we have of dealing with stuff that I think is directly applicable to all the stuff we're talking about. The idea of a council, of people doing things as a collective where they have to come to a consensus and come to agreement….the community decides and that's the difference between a collective model and a hierarchical, pyramidal way of doing things. It's done in a circle not a pyramid.

Apocalyptic futures

I17

[The future] could go either way. It could be so good or it could be so awful and there seems to be this almost masochistic yearning for an apocalyptic future. Almost self-destructive, you know, it's all bad...it's all going to fall down. People seem to almost anticipate that [but] I don't think they get the implications of it.

A liberated society

I12

I guess an anarchist society would be a society with the ability to choose your own options, and your own freedoms, and your own lifestyle without having to basically grow up with a set of options that are provided for you...by society. You have very few avenues to go [down] right now. You can either go to school, you can go to trades, you can be homeless, there are very rigid options that we're provided [with] and if you don't conform...it's a struggle.

Dark futures

I8

I might not live to see it, it might be a hundred years after I die, but [the] fall of democracy, [the] fall of the monetary system, I see that accelerating. I actually can almost see it before I die. Just the way capitalism is like a cancer, they both want the same thing, constant growth, and just like cancer it's starting to chew on itself, and it's starting to get out of the control of the masters, and cracks are starting to show in its facade, and it's evil, and I just feel that blackness getting thicker, [like] fog.

Spiraling crises

I31

It's well within the realm of possibility that we will see...increasing...violence and warfare precipitated by [climate change]....Sociological instability will continue along with ecological change.